The relentless prairie sun heated Daya's hair just short of the ignition point. Yesterday's snow was not just gone, in this arid climate it evaporated from memory. The lawn bristled like a shoe brush with dried grass.
She wished that the despair she had felt last night evaporated with the snow. Gone, with no consequences.
The demons that crouched in the corners of her room, pointed and whispered failure to one another, drove her out of bed too many times to do nothing. I should charge you rent, she snapped at them, see how you like it.
At the lowest, loneliest point, when she went to the window, and remembered that she could not even see the sky out of her basement, she cried and hugged the pillow. Nobody knew that she had hit a bad spot, except for Mike, and it was good to talk to someone about it. She could find him in the library...
And if she would do that, why was she so obtuse about his offer? It was 2017, and they would bail each-other out, instead of running for help to their respective parents.
Plus, her trainer's instinct told her that without someone to push him, Mike would pity himself too much to exercise his foot properly. He'd limp for months, maybe even forever.
She would have taken a shower, but she was afraid to wake up her landlady... she was alone, sleepless and with nothing to lose.
And that's why she had texted Mike.
Doing something, even this stupid thing, calmed her down. It meant she was still kicking. She stretched out on her bed, tossed the pillow to the floor and fell asleep.
But for the beep of the response message, she would have believed the texting a fever dream.
Thank you, I appreciate your willingness to help me out, Mike replied. He added his address and that he would stay home from work.
There was no way she could tell him, hey, I changed my mind, after he made it sound like it was he who needed her help. Gracious, Mike was gracious, and that sealed the deal. She couldn't unmake what last night's fears wrought. Only to make the best of it.
***
She locked the door and inserted the keys into the waiting hand with peeling nail-polish. "Here you go. I'll be renting a room from my coworker."
The landlady squinted at the sun and muttered, "You take care, girl." She stuffed the keys in the back pocket of her worn jeans, her resigned shrug belying the worries about finding another renter. But there was sincerity in that take care too.
That's why Daya chose Calgary when she fled Ontario, that dry-eyed attitude for those who could move on. As long as you live, there is after. As long as you live, you conquer oneself.
And here she was, kicked to the curb next to her two beaten duffel bags, a bedazzled roller suitcase for the skates that nobody wanted and a loaner car. Conquering.
Once the landlady disappeared inside the house, Daya threw the duffels in the trunk, opened the passenger side door, grabbed the suitcase... Ah! Her throat tightened again. What if she tossed it into the window where the landlady hid behind the worn blinds? What if she left it on the curb for a little girl to find and grow up to be a champion, an urban fairy tale? What if... if... if...
She put the skates in the trunk with the duffels. They were things. They cost money. They were things.
Done.
Next.
Her sister would still be at her office in Toronto, so Daya took a deep breath in and dialed. "Hi, Shanti!" she said to the voice mail in an upbeat tone that was a trademark of her new profession. "Guess what, I'm moving, and here is my new—"
"Daya?"
The voice was thick from the flu, but it was Shanti's. Crying in the background testified to more victims of the disease in the household.
"Are you sick? How's the twins? Did I wake them up? I am sorry, I should have texted," Daya stuttered over Shanti's thunderous ahchoo.
Influenza laid the family low; it did not dull Shanti's big-sister radar. "Why are you moving? Are you in trouble?"
Yes, Daya, you should have texted. Daya caught her up on Corolla's dead transmission, the roommate situation and braced for the brewing storm. Shanti would not let her off the hook with a simple take care.
A click of the tongue started Shanti's classic hit, You Must Be More Careful with Money.
Daya took her turn after a discreet sigh. She was careful, more careful than she had ever been. It's just after you cut out all the niceties, it is shocking how much the bare necessities are... and if you thought about the current economy, wasn't it more careless to not have a roommate?
She marched up and down the sidewalk to keep warm, while Shanti's voice poured into her ear.
Who's That Man You're Moving in With?
Daya mentally substituted her sister for Annie Lennox. If she had texted, it would have only delayed the inevitable, and she needed someone to know that she was moving and where, in case they had to find her body later—not a sentiment to share with Shanti.
She boiled Mike down to a librarian with a broken foot who needed a caretaker. Her innards rebelled against this summation, in vain. If she told Shanti that he had cool hair and that she had a good feeling about the way he chuckled deep in his throat, Shanti would hop on a plane. Or worse, she'd tell Mom and Dad, and then they would hop on a plane.
Daya's appeal to the instinctual need to care for the sick and the men didn't fool Shanti.
Come Back to Ontario, I'll Buy You a Ticket. Stay with Me. Stay... Composed by Shanti, performed by Beyonce. Daya was so caught up in putting her sister's words to music that she'd nearly missed a bombshell.
"And I have plenty of room, Daya. Sameer moved out last month."
"Wait, what? Why didn't you tell me anything? What happened with you two? Had you been fighting?" Daya's mind span fruitlessly like her Corolla's tires in the snowbanks last winter.
There was a pause on Shanti's end. "It's not a phone conversation," she said tightly. "Let me know if you need help and take care."
"Give my love to Mom and Dad," Daya piped in just before Shanti dropped the call.
The kids... she can't talk in front of them about her problems with their dad.
Daya frowned at the gladiolus flower she used as her background pic. It didn't please her in the slightest that she had found a magic way to plug the fountain of Shanti's worries. The well in her own chest was now overflowing. Sameer and Shanti, their marriage seemed as eternal as the Universe... and she would not figure it out by standing on the sidewalk.
Mike, I'll be there in a few, she texted, and started the car.
***
He waited for her outside the condo's entrance, basking his freckled face in the sunshine. Next to him purple petunias, speckled with white dots, did exactly the same thing. Everything was rallying after the snowfall.
"Quite a change from yesterday, eh?" he called out to her.
"That's Calgary for you: Don't like the weather? Wait ten minutes," she replied by rote. A year here made her a pro in wearing layers and packing an umbrella, a sun hat and gloves each day, every day, no matter what the calendar said.
"Ah, yes. Sorry, I won't be of any use with your bags." He handed her the spare key—the second key in two days. First his car, now his house. If he had a treasure chest that should come next... For now, he pivoted on his crutches to unlock the door. Sun turned his hair into a precious crown, at odds with an over-sized dark-blue sweater and baggy jeans. Who wore sweaters in 2017, anyway?
She made a relay back and forth to unload the car, then drove around to find the street parking, since the condo had only one spot within the gated low-rise complex. With the skates in tow, she stepped from the carpeted hallway inside Mike's, and now hers, abode.
The apartment had one of those 90s layouts that opened from the threshold straight into the living space: the den, the kitchen, the eating nook all in one. The place was squeaky clean, its walls hung over with the posters of armored hulks chasing monsters with ridiculously bright swords and guns. A potted lemon tree looked out of the window in bewilderment.
Mike lounged on a chocolate-colored leather couch in the living room when she entered. He pressed a button on his console controller to freeze a warrior with preposterous swords on the screen of his TV. He (Mike, not warrior) struggled out of the overstuffed pillows. "Let me show you to your room."
She let him get by her, studying a neon-bright painting of a woman that didn't belong with the earthy and mossy colour scheme of the place. The painted beauty looked over her shoulder at the viewer, shirt's collar slipping down. A curtain of golden hair took up most of the canvas. It was a no brainier to deduce what drew the artist's eye to his model.
"My mother," Mike murmured, looking straight ahead, but jerking his head towards the glowing artwork.
After being caught out, she tried not to be so obvious in observing his face—yeah, there was a resemblance. The same slightly aquiline nose, the same upturned corners of the eyes, the same vigor to their hair. Except for the lips. She had never seen a man pinch his lips like that. Like he locked his thoughts in along with the words.
"Aha." Daya matched the neutrality of his tone. It was not weird at all to have a portrait of your mother as a young half-nude on the wall of your living room. In the bedroom it would have been weirder, for example.
Besides, Ms. Wilson looked like an actress. Maybe she was famous back in the day... or not. Plenty of beautiful women dreamed big and went nowhere. You would know, won't you? To shut her snide inner voice, Daya said loudly, "Your place is super-neat."
"Oh, I stashed all the beer cans and dirty underwear in my bedroom." He offered her an ominous smile. "Don't open the door, young lady, it's dangerous."
"Thanks, Bluebeard, but you can't fool me. You're a neat-freak. I have a younger brother, he can't go ten minutes without trashing a room. His stuff just trails him: jackets, shirts, ties, old papers, toys, backpacks, pencils, pencil shavings... you name it."
"Fine, you found me out. I hate disorganized spaces... plus, I have a secret weapon—a cleaning service every couple of weeks. The lady keeps me honest, the way she looks at anything out of place..." He shivered to show just how stern his housekeeper was.
Daya had no pity for his predicament. "Just how much do they pay librarians? I think I'm in the wrong line of work."
"I had a small inheritance. It helps." Mike's lips snapped into a tight line again, a boom barrier signaling the dead-end, another topic he did not care to elaborate on. Fortunately, she didn't have to rake her brain for another small-talk stratagem.
He hopped down the hall to point at the white doors hiding the washer and dryer, his master-suit, and, finally, her bathroom and her bedroom to be.
That last door he left open. "Unfortunately, I am even more useless with heavy lifting than normal, and could not move the coffee table out of the way to fold out the bed. Can you? Otherwise, I'd—"
"I can," she said before he'd unveil a recruitment strategy for some male specimen. The coffee table had a particle board carcass and a removable glass top, nothing requiring extra troops. She had plenty of muscular strength. "Where do you want it?"
"Oh, living room would be fine..." he scratched his head. "I'd better get out of your way. Sorry..." He rushed out, swinging between the crutches like a plump pendulum.
Daya dropped her bags on the couch and lifted the glass top. Why wasn't this in the living room to start with? She lagged the base through the hall, while the unnaturally bright eyes, red, green, and violet, glared at her from the framed posters; light sabers, axes and blasters aimed at her too, but she shrugged it off.
The titles on the posters promised dope stories of adventures, gore and vengeance. Once in a while an improbably beautiful woman's face popped in between the fighters, sometimes threatening with fans and bows, or daggers, sometimes just looking pretty. It made her think of Mike's mother... in some strange way she belonged with this collection.
Daya dragged the table in between Mike and his mortal combat, the legs leaving grooves in the pricey carpet that massaged the soles of her feet. She smoothed the skid marks with her toe and straightened out with a sigh of relief. There, no permanent damage done. The thing wasn't heavy exactly, just cumbersome.
He automatically ducked to see around her and had the courtesy to blush. "Sorry."
"Why wasn't it in the living room in the first place?" she asked after installing the glass top. Mike put his controller on it like it should have been there all along.
"I was building a model on it," he said. The blush that started to fade came back with a vengeance. She kept looking at him until he explained. "It was a LEGO model. Of Winterfell. With moving parts... That's a castle in a Game of—"
"I know, I know... Game of Thrones' Winterfell." His secrets proved innocuous so far. Daya took a cleansing breath and marched into the kitchen.
"Are you hungry?" Mike asked, while the warrior on the screen leaped from a cliff to tackle a hairy humanoid with a stone club.
She did not answer, staring inside his fridge, humming Walking in a Winter Wonderland. Except this was a wasteland, not a wonderland.
A lonely apple rolled across the produce box on the bottom. A jar of peanut butter dating to the last century peeked hopefully from behind a four liter jug of milk and a loaf of bread. Ignoring the battalion of pop cans, she opened the pantry, and her heart sank. Bags of chips and cereal boxes, battalions of them, matched by color and size occupied the shelves. This will haunt her dreams tonight. She shut that door and popped her head back into the fridge. Not that she expected it to refill with food magically, but she needed to see that apple.
It was at that moment that she felt a surge of renewed hope. Her life was not useless. She got a degree in how to help people, and now she had a desire to match, even if it started with helping just this one person.
"Mike," she said emphatically, "Mike, we must go shopping."